The Hindu Business Line : ‘MNCs, corporates must focus on inclusive marketing’

New Delhi, Feb. 22 The essence of good marketing is getting to know your customers. Multinationals and corporates should realise the huge market potential that the bottom of the pyramid offers and companies must innovate to tap this market, marketing experts said here on Friday. “Inclusive marketing looks at the poor as both producers and consumers. In India, there are 650 million people who survive on income which is less than a dollar a day. Comprising 30 per cent of India’s market, this section of the population is viewed as a bin for obsolete products. It is this section that the corporates must tap,” Mr Pradeep Kashyap, CEO, MART, said at a marketing summit.

The summit, based on the theme ‘Inclusive Marketing: Innovative Strategies for the Development of the Masses’, organised by the Birla Institute of Management Technology, called for understanding the rural audience and ensuring that products and services reached them.

“Corporates believe that the market at the bottom of the pyramid is need-based. This mindset has to be changed and they should find long-term viability of business in this segment. This market can be as profitable as its urban counterpart provided companies innovate,” said Dr Sharad Sareen of XLRI, Jamshedpur.

Pointing out that akin to its urban counterpart, the per capita expenditure has shown a rise in the rural segment, he said, “for every price point, there is a value proposition and it has to be identified to generate growth. The future of the market therefore is also a consumer with limited purchasing power but desirous of buying good things, which are inexpensive”.

Asking companies to avoid marketing myopia, Ms Rama Bijapurkar, a market strategy consultant, said, “The biggest impediment is only in our minds. Finding good partners is a key component of the bottom-of-the-pyramid strategies and these participants can be either from the public or the private sector. This will empower the poor to provide for themselves as well as become a consumer”.

The aspiration of the rural consumer is similar to the urban consumer, said Mr Sudarshan Banerjee, a management consultant, adding that a rural consumer is customer waiting for services. “Marketers adopt a non-linear approach for linear issues. All they have to do is provide international quality at Indian prices.”

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